Germany and Italy: agreement on close cooperation

Germany and Italy are the two countries with the largest amounts of industrial production in Europe. So by working more closely together, the Italian Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) aim to approach opportunities and challenges in the field of Industrie 4.0 together. The goal in particular is to encourage the rapid development of innovative and scalable Industrie 4.0 solutions.

A joint key issues paper identifies the three main themes of the cooperation: Germany and Italy will in future seek an intensive exchange of ideas and experience, in particular in the areas of standardisation, the support of SMEs and employee qualification.

On 18 January 2017, the then Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel and his Italian opposite number Carlo Calenda issued invitations to the German-Italian economic conference entitled 'Taking Advantage of the Potential of Digitisation for Enterprises – Investing in our Future', at which the participants also included Federal Chancellor Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and over 220 high-ranking representatives of enterprises and public institutions. After the conference the key issues paper was adopted.

More information about the cooperation with Italy can be found under the following links: